


A Dream, Nothing More

by athenasdragon



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Dancing, Conflict Resolution, Cute, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Making Out, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spellcasting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-28 00:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6306175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/pseuds/athenasdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agnieszka has mixed feelings about the Dragon's return. Of course she's been longing for him since he left, but he seems utterly uninterested in picking up where they left off. The Wood still has a stronger hold on them both than they'd like to admit.</p><p>This begins exactly where the book leaves off and basically depends on the fact that neither of them is the best at communication.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream, Nothing More

“Come and meet my mother,” I said. I reached out and took his hand.

A ripple ran out from us, either a result of our magic making contact for the first time in a year or from the gossip that accompanies the confirmation of rumors. I didn’t much care. I could feel my magic welling at my fingertips, and the thin wall keeping the Dragon’s back. His flush deepened; someone failed to conceal a snicker.

I reluctantly withdrew my power, but I could not keep from swelling my chest with happiness. Cheerful spells of luck and goodwill did their best to dance off my tongue like the songs we had been singing before the Dragon’s appearance. Smiling widely, I tugged at his wrist to pull him towards where my family stood. He followed with the remains of his dignity.

Danka watched warily from the edge of the firelight. I understood her caution, though I also knew that she never shied from me. My mother smoothed her skirts and curtseyed when she realized that we were approaching her.

“My Lord.”

“Mother, this is Sa—the Dragon,” I corrected, deciding to keep his flame-touched name to myself. “My Lord, this is my mother.”

Sarkan slipped his hand from mine and bowed low—a gesture I had never seen from him before. “A pleasure.”

My mother hesitated. Her eyes slid down to our recently-joined hands. Only the crackling of the bonfire filled the silence, which reminded me that we were being watched closely. Judging by his stiff posture, Sarkan had not forgotten.

Eventually my mother found her voice. “My Lord, I thank you for your kind treatment of my daughter, and for your efforts to protect our valley from the Wood.”

“You have your daughter to thank for that. Agnieszka is powerful in her own right.”

“We know,” Danka interjected, finally stepping forward. Her bearing was firm but not yet confrontational. I wished to squeeze Sarkan’s fingers with my own. “She has been nothing but helpful since her return to us. The Wood is becoming safe again, and our crop this year was the best in living memory.”

Things have been better since you left, she meant, though she did not speak the words aloud. Many in the valley had thought it. One little girl just a week previously had shyly approached me to tell me she liked me much better than “the last Dragon”.

“Our Lord has watched over our valley with great care. If he had not held back the forest until we were able to muster the strength for an attack, we would have been lost many years ago.” I maintained eye contact with Danka, however much I wished to catch a glance of Sarkan’s face.

“Of course.” Danka inclined her head: an acknowledgement, pending actual approval. “I hope that my Lord will feel welcome to stay for the rest of the feast.”

I felt a tendril of magic, questioning. Sarkan sought my acceptance even while he assumed a neutral expression. I reached back with a spell that was more song than power, one which ran on the jumbled humming of one’s own brain and tended to diffuse soft light as it was cast. I thought that it was happy and warm enough to convey my answer.

“Thank you,” the Dragon replied, our connecting thread snapping suddenly. “I would like that.”

Conversation resumed with the low rush of a wave breaking. The villagers would not be happy to have their Lord observing the celebration, I knew, but I was much too pleased to worry. Some of the dozing children had woken up to watch us with large eyes, and now they turned to those playing music once more. Danka and my mother seemed to melt out of the firelight; I saw their dark silhouettes move towards a tall shape that must have been my father.

We stood a little apart from the heaped tables and watched the fire. I wanted to say something, but I found my throat dry and unwilling. For a year I had reconciled myself to the fact that the Dragon had left forever. To have him appear out of thin air as he had done when I was seventeen was just as disconcerting as it was welcome.

I thumbed a hole in the sleeve of my dress and ran my tongue over the shape of a few words. A couple spun past us, the girl’s skirt flared wide, the boy’s hand in the air, both whooping with laughter and already drawn back into the celebration. I was so focused on the way their boots left gentle indents in the springy grass that I didn’t hear Sarkan speak the first time.

“What?”

The firelight threw the angles of his face into sharp relief as he scowled. “I suppose you think I’m going to ask you to dance.”

I had no response, so I didn’t offer one. Instead, I said, “She’s one year younger than I am.”

“Who?”

“That girl, the one dancing.” There was more than one now but I didn’t feel the need to specify. “Just a few months later and she would have been a Dragon Girl.”

“Is that what you call yourselves?”

I hummed a confirmation and felt a seed in the earth below my feet crack and sprout. I was overflowing with magic, ready to spill over at the edges. “We had to call ourselves something. Otherwise what were we but a group of frightened girls?”

Sarkan exhaled slowly. “I did agree not to take any more.”

“That hardly makes up for the ones you did take,” I pointed out. “Maybe some of them will come back now. Now that the Wood is safe.”

“Perhaps.”

The seed sent out a tender, fresh shoot, too optimistic about finding sun and warmth after harvest time. “And I’m still here.”

“Yes.”

There was some discussion on the other side of the bonfire—apparently someone thought that the children should be sent home, and someone else was determined to allow them to stay as long as they wished. I clearly heard my own name.

“We should cast an illusion,” I said suddenly. The words fit neatly in my mouth, though there was no magic behind them. They were right in a different kind of way. “For the harvest, I mean.”

“You mean to make them less frightened,” Sarkan commented drily. “Haven’t they seen enough of your magic?”

“But not yours,” I retorted. “A show of goodwill can do no harm.” I tried to express without words that, with every second he stood beside me without touching, the urge to let my magic flow and mingle with his became stronger.

My expression must have conveyed my wish, or else he agreed with one of my reasons, because he slid his ornate coat from his shoulders and began folding it. It was a warm night, anyway. “Very well, though I don’t have my charts with me. Which one?”

I grinned. “We have the most practice with the rose, and little Marta was just telling me how much she loves them.”

Sarkan flushed again and I knew that he, too, remembered what had happened the last time we cast this illusion together, but I called the children over before either of us could work ourselves into a panic. Their parents hovered behind them, too nervous to step forward but too cautious to leave their families unsupervised.

“Sirs and Madams!” I announced dramatically to the small crowd. “Would you like to see a beautiful illusion?” A few of the children clapped. Some of the smallest ones, secure in their siblings’ laps, could not understand me, but they seemed excited by the strange man with the royal clothing. No doubt they thought the Dragon a prince.

Sarkan turned to face me. If he hesitated slightly to extend his hands, so did I, and for the moment I was able to fool myself into thinking that the entire crowd was not analyzing our every motion. Then my hands were cradled in his—mine calloused and cool, his soft and warm—and he began to speak.

I had almost forgotten his brand of magic: each word rested on the one before until the spell stood sturdy as a stone bridge, or like a clock, where every piece knew its function and performed it perfectly. A pristine rose sprang into existence between our hands. I offered it sunlight with a phrase of song and water with a deep hum. I wove my supports into his spell until the bridge was secured with a network of vines.

Yet my spell was still separate from his. I could feel the thrum of his magic in my hands and throughout my body without having access to any of its power. A thin wall separated us, and it wasn’t mine. I looked up at Sarkan, who was focused completely on the flower. My movement caught his attention and he met my gaze. Slowly, carefully, without his chant breaking, the wall melted and the golden rush of his magic flooded my spell with power. His hands twitched as we were thrown into a stream of magic on which we only rode the illusion as it took its course. The rose grew, catching the light from the fire just as it should, and then the spell spilled out of our cupped hands and onto the ground below.

Low orange flowers blossomed and tangled and waved vines at the sky. The grass grew thick between silver saplings dotted with white buds. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Sarkan’s face, but I could hear the children gasping with delight. The sensation of the illusion was familiar and yet frighteningly intimate all over again. I could feel relief from him, and sorrow, but mostly joy, which I reflected back in amounts that were probably startling.

I finally forced myself to turn towards our audience, who all stood rapt. Even Danka’s face was slack with innocent wonder at the jungle flourishing around us. An ecstasy of pride surged through me and into the spell. A flood of magic threatened to sweep us both away as the illusion spiraled out of control, a thick canopy of leaves forming overhead and tiny detailed insects looping between the flowers. Sarkan froze, eyes wide, but continued stuttering the words of the incantation.

My first instinct was to snap my part of the spell back to myself with as much force as I could muster, but I recalled the last time we had been overwhelmed by an illusion. If I popped it like a soap bubble, the lingering magic would leave us both heady with power. Instead I twisted my wrists so that I could hold tight to Sarkan’s hands. The physical anchor did us both good. I forced the memory of our kiss from my mind along with the unbridled joy and remembered instead the powerless feeling of having my strength emptied by a single incantation, the disapproval, the bone-aching weariness, the loneliness, my painfully-stretched link to my valley home. Not Sarkan, but the Dragon, standing over me and sneering.

The discord mangled the harmony of our magic; my spell was now sand pouring into the fine machinery of his clock. Our rose withered and wept green sap with an uncomfortably familiar rotted scent. The garden around us went convoluted and unsettling before it flickered out of existence.

It only took a few seconds. The younger children had not recognized the Wood, but their parents were wide-eyed for an entirely different reason. I felt hollow, for all the energy that had poured through me just moments before, and Sarkan sagged.

There wasn’t any trace of the real Wood. I was confident that I would have recognized the corruption. But I began to wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to let the spell explode than to sabotage it in such a way.

“What was that?” Danka asked roughly. “Did something go wrong?”

Sarkan straightened, and I was confident that I was the only one who could see the effort it took. “Merely an illustration. Magic can be deceptive and alluring. Agnieszka and I are here for your protection, but others may not be so open with their motives. Beautiful fruit may grow in the forest,” he added, “but be cautious: there may be poison within.”

More than one pair of eyes turned to my basket of golden fruit from the heart trees.

“Yes, my Lord,” someone murmured, and the group ebbed away from us like the tide finally released from the shore. I turned to Sarkan, but too many words clamored for dominance – apologies and accusations each wanting to fly from my tongue – so I said none. When he met my gaze, not even I could read his expression.

I finally formed a coherent thought. “Are you trying to undo everything I’ve done to make them trust the Wood again?” I demanded.

“They shouldn’t trust the Wood,” he retorted. “You know as well as I that corruption runs deep. The Queen may be gone, but her influence still---” He seemed to bite his tongue. “I just want them to be cautious. I want you to be cautious.”

“You don’t think I know my boundaries?”

“No!” He seemed not to realize he had raised his voice until my mother snapped her head around, despite her being several yards away from us. We both saw her narrow her eyes and prepare to intervene. I offered a superficial smile and a wave of my hand to dissuade her. Sarkan ducked close to me and spoke in hissed whispers, his eyebrows furrowed. “I think that I have fought against this Wood for half a century. I think that you and I saw six thousand well-trained men killed under its influence. I think that we both remember the heart trees,” he finished, trailing off slightly. His eyes grew distant and his mouth hard.

I examined his face, hoping to find some sign of his thoughts. Of course I remembered the atrocities we had witnessed. I too had suffered through the agonies of the cleansing ritual and the battle at the Tower. I had found solace in the clean new growth of the Wood.

It might have been too much to hope for that the Dragon would return and immediately join me on my quest to eradicate the last dregs of the corruption, but I could not understand why he refused to recognize that my work was even legitimate. What good was our last stand against the Wood Queen if we remained fearful of the branches’ shadows forever?

“It was a start,” Sarkan acknowledged. “If you think it was the end, you have only your own naïve optimism to blame.”

“If I thought it was the end, why would I still be working to heal the Wood?” I bit back. This was all wrong. I had been so happy to see him materialize before me after all my months of lonely effort. The illusion gave me a taste of our former intimacy, but it was wrong. Tainted.

Corrupted.

We no longer shared the ease of familiarity that had been born of months of exclusive companionship. Maybe that’s all we had ever been: convenience. In breaking the illusion I brought back all the memories of weeks of torture at his hands. I had considered throwing myself from the window. I had wanted to die. I had been pulled unwillingly from my family, and even the Dragon’s prolonged isolation couldn’t excuse that kind of callous treatment.

And yet—and yet, we had both been washed away in the ecstasy of our reunion. Maybe that was the true illusion.

I threw up my hands in a gesture of defeat and stalked away. The first light of dawn had broken my slumber that morning and I was too tired to go through the motions if Sarkan was determined to be difficult.

A great part of the evening passed in a blur of deliberate avoidance. Sarkan and Danka stood in deep conversation a while, I knew, though I could only speculate the topic. Meanwhile I grew tired of waiting for the boys my own age to ask me to dance and took it upon myself. We whirled about the fire a few times; I pretended not to notice Sarkan’s thin-lipped glare.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself—or something like it—and barely waited for the music to change before folding me, unbidden, into his arms. At first I was too stunned to pull away, and then it was too late: we melted into a circle of other dancers. Despite his irritated exterior, the clamminess of his hands through my light summer dress belied his nerves.

I shifted myself so that his stiff footwork wouldn’t crush my bare feet. “I thought you weren’t going to ask me to dance.”

“I didn’t.”

He almost got me to smile at that. I frowned at a point a little over his shoulder instead and realized how much attention we were attracting: the grubby village witch in her mud-splattered dress and wild hair and the regal, aloof wizard in an immaculate coat and gleaming shoes. Gossip never bothered me, but I hoped that we wouldn’t damage the reputations of the other Dragon Girls. I hoped that the people of Dvernik realized that the Dragon didn’t make a habit of dancing with the help—or dancing.

“Do people really still think that?”

I reluctantly returned my gaze to Sarkan’s face. “I don’t know. If they do, I never hear about it. People like me,” I added proudly. “They like the work I do. They wouldn’t want to insult me.”

“So I gather.”

There, we were almost comfortable with each other again. The curve of his shoulder fit so neatly into my hand that I knew I could rest my head against his chest just as easily, even if it meant ducking down a bit. Firelight gleamed off the silver dragon emblazoned across the blue fabric and it looked enticingly warm.

“Agnieszka?”

Damned if this whole thing wasn’t confusing. “Yes?”

“Was this an accident, or am I really so bad a dancer that you couldn’t think of a more graceful way to escape the obligation?”

I looked down to see that thick vines had sprouted from the earth and wrapped around Sarkan’s feet and calves. They retreated obligingly under my glare. “Both.”

He hadn’t really expected me to answer. He extricated each foot with excessive precision, face stony, before bowing away. At first I regretted the sharp retort, but he had said a hundred worse things to me. I turned towards the fire once more and busied myself with the food.

I couldn’t understand why Sarkan kept making advances and then throwing up his walls again just as quickly. Perhaps he was fighting his own nature. Perhaps he too was struggling with the frayed remnants of a once rich affection. Whatever the reason, my own “naïve optimism” probably wasn’t helping.

Eventually even the adults began dozing off, and the food was wrapped and stored and the tables were stowed away. My mother hovered nearby with several children hanging on her skirts.

“I ought to go home,” I told her a little too loudly. “I’m tired.”

“Is he going with you?”

I couldn’t help but soften at the concern in her eyes. “I don’t know. Things have changed so much, and I’m not—I haven’t—I don’t know,” I finished lamely.

“I understand.” From her expression, it looked like she understood things better than me. “Please just be safe and be happy.” And she embraced me as though I was a young child once more.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

When we separated I saw Sarkan, waiting quietly a respectful distance away. Now he stepped forward. “You say that you wish to return home?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I will accompany you back to the Tower.”

My mother only smiled knowingly and stepped away as I worked a response through the conflicting emotions lodged in my throat. “I don’t live in the Tower.”

Sarkan raised an eyebrow as though he had never even considered the possibility. “Then you live with your family?”

“No. I have a cottage in the Wood.”

He blanched. “I see. I cannot say that I understand your continued obsession with that place, but nor could I expect you to continue living in the Tower alone.” A deep breath hissed between his teeth. “I shall return to the Tower. Good night.”

“Wait!”

“What now?” His hands were already outstretched to transport himself back to the Tower.

Damn it all. “It may be unpleasant, even for you.” The jibe was unnecessary but not undeserved. “I haven’t been back since you left. It’s exactly as you left it.”

For the first time in a long time I was worried what his response would be. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “You haven’t begun any repairs? None whatsoever?”

“None whatsoever.”

“You insufferable idiot!” He drew a long hand over his face as though its passage might remove the illusion of our conversation from before his eyes. I stood my ground. “Where am I supposed to stay now?”

“I have room.” As soon as the words escaped my mouth I bit down hard on my tongue. There was no reason for me to continue seeking the Dragon’s company; he had made it clear that, if he was not actually pushing me away, he certainly wasn’t pulling me closer. Or had he? I was still unable to decipher his intentions.

“You want me to come sleep in your cottage with you, alone in the Wood?” With his usual biting sarcasm, the focus of the sentence would have been “alone”. I was puzzled to find that it was “Wood”. “You’re more than welcome to your own lunacy, but I refuse to go back into those trees.”

“Sarkan,” I explained, exasperated, “the Wood is safe now. I wouldn’t spend my nights there if I was in danger of being carried off by a Walker.” He shuddered when I used his name, though it might have been the rapidly cooling air. I was beginning to realize that his reluctance had nothing to do with my choice of abode and everything to do with its location. I stepped forward and placed my hand on his arm. “Sarkan. I promise you that it’s safe. You’re safe.”

He pulled away. “Keep your empty reassurances for the children,” he snarled, but his eyes didn’t look angry. They looked frightened.

I began walking slowly backwards towards the road as though I was luring a reluctant cow back to the stable. “Come with me, Sarkan. Please.” Suddenly my eyes burned. “Please. I’ve missed you.”

And it was the truth. I had spent too many nights in the lonely silence of the Wood. Much as I tried to convince myself that I was happy with the Walkers and the birds as company, the temptation to have a real conversation was overwhelming. To fall asleep with someone else’s breath in the room. To just go back to the way things were when they made sense.

Sarkan’s shoulders sagged. “It doesn’t seem that I have much choice. Yes, all right, very well then.”

The walk back to my cottage was always fast when I hummed my quickening spell. If I impressed my former mentor, he made no note of it.

Soon we passed under the first boughs of the Wood and into an even more impenetrable darkness. I navigated by touch and by sound. Sarkan stumbled behind me until he grew tired of brambles dragging across his skin and resigned himself to taking my hand. After a few minutes a soft glimmer greeted us through the darkness: a stubby tallow candle I had left burning in my window.

I was pleased with the magic which had persuaded the tree to accommodate me among its expansive roots, but Sarkan only raised an eyebrow. “You said you lived in a cottage.”

“It is a cottage!”

“It’s a tree, Agnieszka.”

I scoffed. “It’s more than just a tree.” He trailed behind me as I ducked inside and hurried to shoo a drowsy robin out the window. Unavoidably, my eyes adjusted to see my home as Sarkan might. Perhaps the mossy bed that was so welcoming and comfortable to me would look rough and uninhabitable to him. Surely the verdant floor was dirtier than it was functional. My rough-hewn furniture transformed from charming to haphazard in an instant. It was no Tower library.

“Certainly not,” he agreed, but his sneer didn’t last long. “You did this yourself?”

Pride fluttered hesitantly in my chest. “Yes.”

“Hmm.” He cast his eyes over the table where I collected ingredients for the various tonics and potions I sometimes provided to the nearby villages, one eyebrow raised. “Not your worst work.”

“High praise from the Dragon.”

Sarkan made a slow circle of the room. He came to a stop next to the bed. “And when you told me that there was room here, you intended us to share… this?”

I flushed. Of course part of me had hoped that after our last night together in the Tower. “No,” I hurried to say anyway, and hummed as I twisted my wrists. Sarkan had to step quickly to the side as a second bed rose from the floor, soft vines and shoots curling over its surface. “That one’s yours.”

He looked like he was going to say something, but after all he only took off his coat. I watched him fold it for the second time that evening and place it carefully at the end of his bed. How odd to see this little mark of his orderly habits on my home.

I didn’t dislike it.

After a moment of tense silence I went to the window and blew out the candle. As I nestled into my earthy mattress, a Walker went by outside and snapped a twig. I heard a sharp intake of breath from the bed behind me.

“It’s all right,” I murmured. “It’s all right.”

The breath was released in a sigh. “I know.”

“Sarkan?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you came back.”

I was sure that he wouldn’t respond, but after a few seconds he did. “Go to sleep, Agnieszka.”

“Will you still be here when I wake up?” The question did not occur to me until I asked it aloud. Fear gripped my chest at the thought of awaking to an empty house, the folded coat gone, as though his brief presence had only been a dream.

“As long as one of your pets doesn’t carry me off.”

I relaxed as I heard him roll over: a clear sign that he was done talking. There would be plenty of time for that in the morning. I turned my face into the fragrant moss of my bed and felt the leadenness of my limbs spread throughout my body until I slipped into unconsciousness.

* * *

 

I awoke some hours later to deafening yells very close to my head. Panic shot through me and I rolled away from them and off of my bed to crouch on the moss-covered earth. Spells sprang to my mind, powerful spells of protection and attack, though some part of me knew that they were wrong. I clenched my fist hard to clear my mind of the dregs of sleep, and only then did I recognize the voice: Sarkan.

I sprang to my feet and cast a wavering light, still wary of the unknown threat, and froze at the sight before me. Sarkan lay rigid on his bed. Sweat stood out on his forehead and his hands were clenched into fists. He gasped for breath between anguished yells, which I was beginning to suspect were supposed to be words.

“Sarkan? Sarkan!” I rushed to his side but hesitated to touch him. Even when the corruption had infected his arm he had been weak and quiet—I didn’t know what sort of agony would possess him to scream in such a way. “Sarkan! What’s wrong?”

Eventually I was left with no choice but to place my hands on his forearm. His skin burned as though with an intense fever, and my cool touch seemed to shock him. He turned his wild gaze to me, his breath hissing through clenched teeth. “Burns,” he managed to wheeze, but his locked jaw prevented him from speaking any more.

I couldn’t see any burns, but without knowing how else to help I had to start somewhere. My best remedy was still the one from Jaga’s journal. Now that I was in my own home I had access to morning cobwebs and milk, as well as any number of other materials I might require, so I reluctantly slid my hand from Sarkan’s arm to gather the ingredients and a clay bowl.

The incantation—little more than a cantrip, really—flowed from my lips as I strained fresh milk through the delicate network of spider silk I had collected just that morning. Iruch, iruch, iruch. Sarkan quieted except for the occasional pained moan. Without any actual burns I didn’t know where to spread the mixture, but as usual the spell guided my path. It was my patient’s cooperation I had to worry about.

Milk sloshed onto Sarkan’s chest and he convulsed once, twice, his eyes wide as he realized what I meant to do, still unable to do anything but gasp and groan. I sang and hummed and smiled as soothingly as I could and all the while tried not to let my own panic show. Before he knew it one of my hands supported his neck and the cooling mixture was pouring down his throat. He spat much of it out before the spell took hold enough that he could take long draughts from the bowl. I nodded and kept smiling.

“Nieszka,” he said weakly once he had finished. The hand closest to me opened and shut once. I ended the incantation by repeating a simple up-and-down tune and offered my own hand, which he gripped. He was still a little warm.

I hadn’t seen Sarkan so undone since—well. His shirt was soaked with milk and sweat. His dark hair stuck to his forehead and his breath came in shaky almost-sobs. My hand reached up of its own accord to brush the hair from his face; his eyes fluttered closed at the touch of my cool fingertips.

“What’s wrong?” I murmured.

His voice was low and hoarse. “The tree. The heart tree, it was—happening again—” He coughed and opened his eyes, and when he saw the expression of concern on my face, he attempted to scowl. It wasn’t very convincing, but I removed the hand from his forehead. “A dream, nothing more.”

“You were burning up!” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Has this happened before?” His silence was answer enough. “Sarkan!”

“I haven’t been sleeping—not willingly, anyway.” I realized I was stroking his arm with my thumb, but if he noticed he made no move to stop me. “It’s—the Wood, it’s still there—whenever I sleep—I thought if I stayed away it would improve, but it’s only been worse.”

I sank to motionlessness as I pondered this. So he had been avoiding memories of the Wood, not me at all. Although now I was as much a thing of the Wood as the Queen had been. “Am I making it worse?”

His eyes met mine, serious and finally focused. “No.”

I squeezed his hand and began stroking his forehead again. The horrible reality of the situation slowly dawned on me: not only had Sarkan been dealing with the residual terror of the Wood, alone and sleepless, for months, but I had unwittingly led him straight back to the place he was so desperately trying to forget.

“You could have stayed at an inn,” I eventually said, unsure of how to express my regret.

Sarkan scoffed a little. “An inn?”

“I mean, you didn’t have to come back to the Wood with me. If you’re still worried.” The Dragon worried. The Dragon, worried.

“Ah.” Sarkan pushed himself up onto his elbows. He looked slightly sheepish now that he was truly awake. “Nieszka, I know that the Wood must be safe if you’re happy here. It’s just that—the nightmares,” he bit out, as though they were something shameful. “They try to convince me that I’m wrong.”

I nudged him until he moved over with only mild protests and sat next to him on the bed, which widened obligingly to accommodate both of us. “I remember the nightmares,” I told him. “Right after you left. I went back to the Tower a few times, to see about a funeral for the men, but I just—I couldn’t. Every time I came home to sleep, all I could see was their faces.” Sarkan’s black eyes rested intently on my face. I thought he seemed startled that I had experienced night terrors, too.

“How did you make them stop?” He failed to hide the eagerness in his voice.

“Once I stopped trying to force myself, everything got better. I decided not to go to the Tower unless—until you came back. The Wood helped me; it gave me something to focus on, and I’ve always found the forest soothing. I felt I could face it head-on.”

We fell into silence, but for the first time it was truly companionable. My pallid spell was still the only source of light. Sarkan pressed his shoulder to mine and I couldn’t help but lean in against him.

“I just want them to stop.” The man beside me was a far cry from the one who had whisked me away to his Tower two years previously. Then again, I certainly wasn’t the same person, either.

“I know.” Suddenly I was exhausted. I leaned slowly back on the bed, and Sarkan, after a moment of hesitation, followed.

We lay stretched out together like that for several minutes; after a short while, I gripped his hand in mine, but otherwise we did not move. A stiff wind blew up in the Wood and moaned about my little cottage. It followed a rhythm of sorts, with ups and downs and even a harmony of different branches. I hummed along with it.

Sarkan shifted to face me. I could feel his breath, warm against my shoulder. “Are you casting?”

I shrugged—I was and I wasn’t. This was no spell I had ever learned, not even one where I followed my own path to get to a specified destination. Yet there was definitely a layer of magic beneath the words: thin, yes, but constant and soothing. I turned so that my face was just a few inches away from Sarkan’s.

“Nieszka,” he whispered. His arm curled around my waist, drawing me closer, and I returned the embrace. I redirected the stream of energy still flowing into the light above our heads into whatever the result of my humming would be. We lay in darkness once more.

Sarkan’s lips brushed mine once, softly, and I hummed against him. He held me so tightly I could no longer distinguish where my body ended and his began. The spell’s purpose was becoming apparent; my eyelids were heavy, and Sarkan’s breathing leveled and became rhythmic as it mingled with mine.

My humming took on the tune of a lullaby. The burn spell wove in and out—iruch, iruch—and drew the last feverish heat from Sarkan’s skin. In the end, I had no time to formulate an end to the spell. We fell asleep clutching each other in the dark, our noses touching.

* * *

 

I do not know how long we slept. The late afternoon light slanting through my window finally awakened me, but for all I knew Sarkan’s nightmare could have been just before dawn.

There was no one in bed with me.

Slowly, trying to keep any worry from my movements, I sat up and stretched. Yesterday’s muddy dress scratched against my legs. My cottage was empty, save for a tiny grey mouse which was trying valiantly to reach a pot of honey on the table, but I was reassured to see that a blue coat still lay folded at the foot of the bed. My tongue felt dusty after a better rest than I had experienced in months.

Something that sounded like a dry branch clattered outside. I swung my feet to the floor and padded over to the doorway to look.

Sunlight beamed through the foliage, dappling the earth in gold and green. A sluggish late summer breeze bent the grass. Sarkan was crouched in a growth of shrubbery, his lace-edged sleeves pushed up to his elbows, a sheaf of parchment clutched in his hands.

“Sarkan?”

He glared stonily at me. “Are you intentionally trying to ruin my observation?”

A Walker crept into my field of view. It had apparently just dumped a load of firewood by my door—hence the noise—and now held a golden heart fruit delicately in its twiggy fingers. Sarkan summoned a quill and bottle of ink and began scratching notes onto his parchment.

“Sarkan?”

“What?”

I hastily suppressed my smile. He may have been a different man in the dark, but here in the sunlight he hadn’t changed a bit. “Do you intend to catalogue the entire Wood?”

“Do you intend to stand there being useless? Help me lure it into the clearing.”

I clicked my tongue at the Walker as though summoning a well-trained dog. It loped over to where I stood. When it wasn’t able to figure out what I wanted, it reluctantly handed me its sticky fruit.

“You don’t want this one,” I told it as an excuse. “Wait here.” I ducked into my cottage and emerged a few seconds later with the fruit crushed into a bowl and mixed with honey. The Walker scooped up the pulp with its fingers, tasted it, and apparently decided that it was an acceptable offering, because it carried the bowl off into the trees to share with its friends.

Sarkan watched in mild amazement as it skittered away. “How did you get it to do that?”

I shrugged. “They trust me. I think they disliked the Queen as much as any of us. They guide me to the remaining corrupted trees now, and when I feed them they do me other favors.”

More notes. “What do you feed them? What kinds of favors?”

He looked exactly the way he did when I tried to explain the purification spell I had used on his arm all those months ago: eyebrows furrowed, thin hands frenzied in his attempts to record every detail, his features arranged in a disgruntled scowl. I couldn’t help but chuckle. Then the chuckle turned into a laugh, and before I knew it I was doubled over wheezing with mirth.

This didn’t help Sarkan’s mood. He crashed out of the bushes—I only laughed more at how incongruous he looked—so that he could confront me face to face. “Now what is it, you ridiculous girl?”

“I’m so happy,” I sighed when I had enough air, and it was true. I was happy to have all of him, even the perfectionism and the irritability and the night terrors.

He still didn’t understand. “You said that you found peace when you faced the Wood. All I’m trying to do is comprehend it!”

“I know.” I pulled him into a hug despite his startled noise. “I know.”

After a moment he relaxed into my arms, parchment crinkling against my back. He sighed heavily and put his arms around me.

“It takes time,” I told his shoulder.

One of his hands ran through my tangled hair. “I know.”

Curious Walkers lined the clearing, no doubt worried that this strange creature was absorbing me like a heart tree. I glared at them out of the corner of my eye until they scattered.

No longer distracted, I traced half-remembered spell diagrams on Sarkan’s back with my finger. He shuddered against me and fisted his hands in the rough fabric of my dress. “Nieszka?”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t stay here yet. I’m sorry,” he added when I pulled away slightly. “I need to go back to the Tower.”

Some of the tension left my body; I had been certain he was about to disappear off to the capital again. “I understand. You have business to attend to, and you need to be comfortable.”

He nodded, still looking lost. I kissed him lightly on the nose and his eyes fluttered shut. Leaving or not, his embrace was wonderfully warm, so I nestled my head into his chest as I had wanted to do during our dance at the harvest. “You’re always welcome here.”

“And I hope that you will stay at the Tower sometimes,” he murmured into my hair, “if you can bring yourself to leave the filthy tree you live in.”

“It’s not filthy.” My protest had little conviction behind it—it was a sty, by his standards.

I felt Sarkan’s chuckle deep in his chest. “You intolerable lunatic.” He brought up a hand to tilt my chin so that he had access to my mouth, but hesitated slightly, so I leaned forward and crushed our lips together. The kiss began hot and languid, flavored with the lingering sweetness the heart fruit had left in my mouth, but quickly became urgent. My magic, which had subsided during the night, welled at my mouth and fingertips. I could feel his power just out of reach. Even without any spell to channel them, the streams tried ardently to mix.

I threaded one hand into his hair and pulled him closer, as though the kiss wasn’t bruising enough, and when he gasped at the sensation of my fingernails against his scalp I pushed up into his mouth. My toes curled into the soft grass of their own accord. Sarkan pulled away, briefly, but before I had time to be disappointed he pressed a feverish kiss to my jaw, then several to the soft side of my neck. The power in my chest built to an unbearable level.

“I love you,” I moaned before I could stop the words. Sarkan hesitated for a moment before humming and kissing along my collarbone. I smiled. People expressed themselves in different ways. “And your coat is still inside!” I added as an afterthought.

“Perhaps I need to stay for a few minutes more, at least.”

I laughed and pulled him back up for another kiss.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to maxinia and b00kstorebabe (both on tumblr) for giving me feedback on this, and especially to Max for suggesting that they have PTSD in the first place. Sorry for so much angst! Please let me know what you think. :)


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